He listened to her very devoutly, with an air of giving great weight to those simple arguments. They were more soothing to his pride, at least, than the way in which her mother took him at his word.
“Frances speaks,” said Lady Markham—and while she spoke, the sound of Markham’s hansom was heard dashing up to the door—“Frances speaks as if she were in the interest of all the people who prey upon visitors in London. I think, on the whole, Captain Gaunt, though I regret your going, that my reason is with you rather than with her. And, my dear, if Captain Gaunt thinks this is right, it is not for his friends to persuade him against his better judgment.”
“What is Gaunt’s better judgment going to do?” said Markham. “It’s always alarming to hear of a man’s better judgment. What is it all about?”
Lady Markham looked up in her son’s face with great seriousness and meaning. “Captain Gaunt,” she said, “is talking of leaving London, which—if he finds his stay unprofitable and of little advantage to him—though I should regret it very much, I should think him wise to do.”
“Gaunt leaving London? Oh no! He is taking you in. A man who is a ladies’ man likes to say that to ladies in order to be coaxed to stay. That is at the bottom of it, I’ll be bound. And where was our hero going, if he had his way?”
Frances thought that there were signs in Gaunt of failing temper, so she hastened to explain. “He was going to Switzerland, Markham, to a place Mrs Gaunt knows of, where she is to be.”
“To Switzerland!” Markham cried—“the dullest place on the face of the earth. What would you do there, my gallant Captain? Climb?—or listen all day long to those who recount their climbings, or those who plan them—all full of insane self-complacency, as if there was the highest morality in climbing mountains. Were you going in for the mountains, Fan?”
“Frances was pleading for London—a very unusual fancy for her,” said Lady Markham. “The very young are not afraid of responsibility; but I am, at my age. I could not venture to recommend Captain Gaunt to stay.”
“I only meant—I only thought——” Frances stammered and hung her head a little. Had she been indiscreet? Her abashed look caught young Gaunt’s eye. Why should she be abashed?—and on his account? It made his heart stir a little, that heart which had been so crushed and broken, and, he thought, pitched away into a corner; but at that moment he found it again stirring quite warm and vigorous in his breast.
“I always said she was full of sense,” said Markham. “A little sister is an admirable institution; and her wisdom is all the more delightful that she doesn’t know what sense it is.” He patted Frances on the shoulder as he spoke. “It wouldn’t do, would it, Fan, to have him run away?”